Wedding!

Having successfully reigned victorious in the Bride Tri, I returned home ready for the rest of the wedding festivities. Our hairdresser, Sharon Fickell, is not only a talented hairdresser but is also (by my own calculation) Columbus, OH royalty. Her son Luke is the defensive coordinator for the Ohio State Buckeyes and took over the head coaching position for a year following Jim Tressel’s resignation. Anyhow, she came to our house to do our hair, beginning with Caleh who bravely and kindly volunteered to take the 8:30am shift while the rest of us were racing. The morning flew by. We had our hair done and ate a delicious lunch catered by my grandma and great aunt. Unfortunately, I, having struggled the entire summer with some decisions surrounding what graduate degree I really wanted to pursue, had to attend to some last minute application details. This cut into my designated nail painting time. However, the ever calm, cool, and collected Mary Helen, my dear friend/college roommate/bridesmaid, came to my rescue and dropped what she was doing to paint my nails. It was not the first time she has come to my rescue and probably will not be the last.

The application time also cut into my practice time for the father-daughter dance. I had spliced together a little “mix” in which our serious father-daughter song would be interrupted by a series of funny dance songs. Having procrastinated until the very last minute to practice, my dad and I decided that 5 minutes of practice would be better than none. While the rest of the house laughed at us, we attempted to learn dances to cotton-eyed Joe, Bye Bye Bye, Twist and Shout, and Whip My Hair in minimal time. I can’t say it was pretty.

By the time we arrived at the church, I had finished my various applications, make-up, nails, and dance practice. The prep time at the church is pretty blurry in my memory, although I do remember that Margaret’s “Wedding Day Emergency Kit” came in handy several times. Our church coordinator Gayle was amazing and kept everything flowing really well. After my bridesmaids (Margaret, Caleh, Amelia, and Mary Helen) left for their processional, I was left with my dad to prepare for the long walk to the altar. While I don’t define my dad by his cancer survivor status, I found the time with him to be pretty emotional because I imagine that these were the types of moments he imagined wanting to live for when he was fighting the disease.  He is an inspiring person and father, was often the only one who understood my sense of humor growing up, and has always been my biggest triathlon supporter, having graduated from “equipment manager” to “general manager” years ago (he’s now mentoring Tim to take over the position). I generally tried to keep serious conversation to a minimum here because I didn’t want to get too emotional. Once we started down the aisle, though, I saw Tim, who looked a little choked-up. That put me in a hard position. I didn’t want to look at my dad and cry, look at Tim and cry, or focus on my dress, which I was tripping over during my less than graceful procession down the aisle. What can I say? I’m no Kate Middleton. Thus, I looked up at my father-in-law, the presiding pastor at the wedding. He was just standing there with a nice, calm smile. I have never been so overjoyed to see him!

Unfortunately, both my father-in-law and Tim remarked that I was scowling during the ceremony, and they subsequently concluded that I must be terribly unhappy. I would like to set the record straight. I was most certainly not unhappy! My scowl, of which I was entirely unaware, must have been due to a combination of taking in the seriousness of the situation, trying not to cry, and focusing intently on the drops of sweat running down my upper arm accumulating in a large drop on my elbow.

Overall, the ceremony was beautiful. The brass quartet and organist were great, Janice and Julie did the readings wonderfully, and Dani and Hillary performed a beautiful flute/soloist duet. In addition to Hillary, all of my other cousins participated in the ceremony as the crucifer, greeters, bulletin and bubble hander-outers, and acolytes. My photographer Tessa and my aunt Tracy kept pictures flowing smoothly and quickly after the ceremony. I cannot thank everyone who was part of the ceremony enough. It meant so much to both of us that you were willing to be involved.

Following the ceremony, we went to Highbanks Metro Park for pictures. When we arrived upon a weed and wildflower-ridden field with a nearby path in the woods, Tessa saw the potential and got right to work. My bridesmaids in heels probably did not love walking around an unkempt field (I saw Mary Helen narrowly miss some deer droppings), but they didn’t complain.

Finally, we arrived at the reception. I chose Brookshire as my venue largely because it offers really good all-inclusive packages. The owner, Joy, was a successful wedding planner before building and managing the venue. It is quite possibly the least stressful wedding venue ever. Joy organized one day during Christmas break when I met with all the vendors – the caterer, the florist, the baker, and the DJ, and they went from there. By the time I arrived at the venue, everything had been flawlessly set-up. If there were any snafus, I certainly did not hear about them. Our steak/salmon dinner was delicious, the Maid of Honor/Best Man toasts were awesome, and the cake cutting was not quite as awkward as it could have been, although my husband needed prompting to remember that he needed to feed me the cake.

At last, it was time for the first dance, followed by the father daughter dance. Knowing that our cumulative practice time was less than ten minutes, I was slightly concerned about the quality of our dancing. I’m quite confident that our dancing was embarrassingly terrible, but at least we got everyone laughing and set the tone for a good time. Margaret, I dare you to do better. Start practicing now. I would also like to send a special shout-out to Margaret, who won the bouquet toss amidst substantial enthusiastic competition, and Emil, who won the garter toss amidst a striking lack of enthusiastic competition.

The rest of the evening was great fun. For the second time in my life, I just relaxed and danced, prompting over a dozen remarks questioning my sobriety. I was completely sober.  Others, however, were probably not. The bar was so busy, in fact, that the bartender had to call in a second bartender for help. This brings me joy because a) it means people were having a good time b) it means we probably got our money’s worth out of our per-head open bar fee. I hear the party continued well after Tim and I left in our artistically decorated (Thanks Amelia and MH) “Just Married” car.

The End.

Postlude: Tim and I traveled to Mallorca and Madrid, Spain for our honeymoon. There, we rented bikes and kayaks to tour mountains, vineyards, and coastlines, spent a day and an evening on a sailboat, went snorkeling, cliff-jumping, rappelling down a cliff into the sea, shimmying through very small holes in a large mountainous cave, hiking, cathedral and castle touring, and ate very long dinners on patios with wonderful views. Of course, all of you know this since one of you was there and the other four saw the pictures on Facebook. :-)